2023 Awards - Patient Engagement

Our patient feedback system has been transformed - moving from a manual process to an exciting new digital platform.

We have invested in patient experience software that allows our current patient surveys, along with the national Friends and Family Test to become fully automated. Text messaging and IVR (interactive voice response) calls will replace paper and postage - giving a range of our clinical services the opportunity to understand real time patient feedback, along with any themes and risks. The system includes the ability to produce information in Easy Read and in other languages as well.

Saving colleagues' time and money spent on data collection and analysis, the project is effectively paying for itself - as well as realising other benefits including creating positive feedback messages to share with individuals and teams.

Most important of all, with both quantitative (numbers and statistics) and qualitative (descriptions and opinions) data collected, we now have valuable insights that we can use to drive improvements to patient care, safety, and experience.

NHS111, Urgent Care Services, Community Nursing and Home Visiting across all our counties are included in Phase one of the scope. Phase two will bring our GP and primary care services on board.

The Experience Platform is making a huge difference to how we seek-out and act on the comments we receive from our patients.

It provides our teams with a rich source of intelligence and data they can use to action improvement and change. Finding out from our patients what matters most to them improves care experiences and helps us to reach the high-standards we strive to deliver. For our people it provides an almost continuous feedback loop they can use to deliver the best possible outcomes.

Cardiac Virtual Ward – Working in Partnership with Blackpool Victoria Hospital, Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB, NHS Greater Manchester Integrated Care and Manchester University Hospital.

COVID-19 has exacerbated elective waiting list pressures throughout services in the United Kingdom. Patients awaiting cardiac surgery are at particularly high risk of morbidity and mortality from prolonged delays. This inspired the idea to set up a Cardiac Remote Monitoring Service.

FCMS is working in partnership with the above hospitals and DOCOBO (our digital monitoring platform) from December 2022 to ensure that whilst awaiting outpatient surgery, patients can be monitored, maintained, and optimised for surgery using telehealth technologies at home. This has helped reduce need for admission to hospital for assessment and reduce pressure on GP / community services. Empowering the patients to take ownership over their health by providing them with the equipment and the training needed while ensuring the patients that these readings are being monitored daily with one of our clinicians always available at the other end of the phone.

Our service is all-inclusive to ALL patients even if unable to use the technology. Our team will carry out an individual assessment and a further visit to the patients home in order to be able provide these patients with a personalised care plan based on their needs.

In the absence of telehealth initiatives, patients who develop worsening symptoms whilst on an outpatient waiting list will have to take the initiative to bring their symptoms to the attention of the relevant team.

FCMS also committed to improving our service based on regular patient experience and feedback. Working together with our hospital colleagues to ensure the service is continually growing and improving to fit the needs of the patients.

Patient Feedback:

“Knowing you were there to help me and just one phone call away gave me such peace of mind – As a team you can take pride in knowing that you make a difference in looking after patients with such care.”

“ Being on this service feels like you are not forgotten about “

“ As someone who lives alone , it has given me such peace of mind and support while awaiting my surgery”

“ Everyone is extremely kind, approachable and genuinely caring”

“ The equipment is easy to use and is all easily explained by the staff upon initial visit”

“This is the gap that needed filling, left in limbo not knowing when the surgery is and whether our mother is safe whilst living abroad. Just what we needed. Thank you”

“ Great idea, felt empowered and reassured taking my readings and being reassured that everything is as it should be”

“ Someone visiting me made me feel like NHS cared about me after multiple appointment cancellations”

We manage the Glenridding Medical Practice which, due to a combination of resource pressures; a small rural population and the needs of the patients, closes at lunchtime every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. To ensure GP cover for the population in line with our contractual requirements, we had an arrangement with the nearest Practice to provide Glenridding patients with appointments on these afternoons. The nearest practice is a 30 mile round trip via car, there is limited public transport (every 2 hours and takes 55 minutes each way) and during bad weather, road conditions can be treacherous and are regularly closed.

Following discussions with the PPG and local health partners, we decided to innovate and launch a pilot of an alternative service. This service was made up of a remote call handling team who utilise a clinical decision support tool called Odyssey. Where the Odyssey call handler can’t satisfy the patients need, sign-posts have been enabled direct to our DAS (Digital Assessment Service) GP who conducts video and phone consultations where the patient doesn’t require a physical examination. Where a physical examination is required, an appointment at the nearest Urgent Treatment Centre (UTC) or Out of Hours treatment centres is arranged – these are scheduled appointments directly booked into their systems. Odyssey can also sign-post to ED and the Ambulance service for those requiring emergency care, and other local services such as Pharmacy for those who don’t require GP. All referrals are submitted electronically with summaries filed in the patients GP records.

Our Pilot lasted approximately 3 months with no complaints and no adverse incidents. There was also excellent patient feedback from received questionnaires and our PPG. This Pilot has now been embedded and has become the normal service for the practice patients on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. This service is now our contingency should we be unable to staff the Practice and has assisted other Practices within the CHoC family.

Patients are positive about how quickly their call is answered, the advice they are given and the follow on care (if required); whilst not having to travel a 30 mile round trip has a positive impact on reducing carbon footprint. For those who can’t drive, a 10 minute GP appointment can take up to 3 and a half hours out of their day when factoring in the bus journey time and waits for the bus. This is a significant time commitment for our patients, their families and/or carers.

I am nominating DHU Healthcare for Best patient engagement for embedding a new digital patient experience platform. The Experience insights platform is Cloud: accessible 24/7/365 through web-browser , Multi-channel survey data collection, Scalable platform with unlimited questionnaires, Real-time reporting , Smart text analytics: emotions, themes, sentiments. The tool allows DHU to report on data at each of these levels

to support cross service reporting (e.g. all services within East Midlands) and the data can be tracked over time. The survey links contain hierarchy information (no need to ask patient “Where do you seen?”)Data collection channels for DHU include online, sms,survey links – link to online survey Q&A – questions & answers as plain text, Email – survey linksQR codes / NFC stickers e.g. on posters and Paper: DHU provides patient data from their Patient Administration System, with only required fields for carrying out surveys (e.g. clinical location, contact email/phone number, demographics, and uniqueID)

Data is processed by Civica according to agreed rules: e.g. duplicates are removed, survey fatigue rules applied, validity of numbers and emails are checked, consent and STOP lists are checked. admins, managers and clinicians can view results through Experience reporting tools and dashboards realtime. There are a variety of accessibiklty options i.e

• Informative, clear and user friendly survey pages – logical layout, sharp colours and contrast
• Mobile friendly survey pages – rescale to screen size
• Surveys can be offered in different languages across all channels (including SMS)
• Photosymbols.com – allows DHU to create easy read surveys
• Children, young people and Easy Read – themes
• DHU users have access to a real-time dashboard providing snapshot of data
• Showing key metrics across up to 6 user selected tiles
• Dashboard view can be customised to individual users:
• Type of tile (patient scores, FFT, trends, etc)
• Which service and/or region results come from (e.g. 111 or West Midlands)
• Which surveys and questions to include
• Date range (from - to), e.g. last 3 months
• Position on the dashboard DHU users also have access to set of detailed reports
• Civica will also create additional reports bespoke to DHU needs.

Use of this system will enable DHU to be more proractive about listening to patient feedback and using it to inform codesign and improved outcomes

I am nominating the Patient Experience and Engagement team for DHU Healthcare as they are an exceptional team that embodies the true spirit of interdisciplinary collaboration, consistently building strong relationships that lead to remarkable and impactful results for patients and their families.The team's commitment to working across disciplines is truly commendable. They have seamlessly brought together professionals from various backgrounds including medical, administrative, and patient advocacy. Their ability to leverage each team member's expertise has not only enriched the quality of their initiatives but has also fostered an environment of open communication and idea sharing. The relationships the team has cultivated extend beyond their immediate members and borders.

Their collaborative efforts have resulted in forging robust partnerships with patients and their families setting up focus groups and actively involving crucial stakeholders, the team has demonstrated a remarkable dedication to ensuring patient-centricity in all aspects of their work. They have also implemented a new digital patient experience platform to increase and difersify rich data from patients to inform and drive service development and codesign of new services and patients to take ownership of their healthcare journey and included patients , staff and system partners in in the developement of the organisation 3 year strategy that has enabled more effective and tailored engagegment activity to ensure that the patients voice is heard.They raise the profile of looking a how outcomes have been improved based on feedback and their active role in community engagment activities speaks volumes about their dedication to collaboration. Their initiatives have consistently led to measurable improvements in patient satisfaction and outcomes. By bringing together diverse perspectives, they have been able to identify innovative solutions to complex challenges, leaving a lasting positive impact on the quality of care provided.In conclusion, the Patient Engagement and Involvement Team's commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration, their ability to build strong and meaningful relationships, and their achievement of impactful results make them exceptionally deserving of this Award. Their dedication to patient-centric care and their ability to leverage the strengths of every team member showcase their outstanding contributions to the healthcare field.

We are committed to engaging with patients to ensure we can identify areas for development, this is particularly evident on our CMDU service.

At the start of the patient’s journey, we will discuss our Friends and Family survey with them. Once the call ends, we send the patient a link to the survey for them to complete when they feel ready. At the end of each month, the survey results are collected, analysed, and shared with the appropriate managers for review and action. At the end of the quarter, a full report is produced highlighting any trends. In our latest report, 1265 patients used our CMDU service and 16 completed our survey. Of the 16 responses, 75% rated the service as “Very good”, 19% “Good” and one person rated it “Neither good nor poor”. When asked why they gave these ratings, we received comments such as:

“Very clear and reassuring”,

“Excellent service all within 14 hours”,

“Clear advice”,

“Prompt.” and

“Did all that could be expected.”

It is possible that we only receive a 1% response rate because of the unique way we deliver our CMDU service, where we discuss the decision-making process with patients and give answers in real time. For example, if a patient cannot receive treatment, a clinician will speak with them to clearly explain why. From experience, we know that many patients express concern when they cannot receive treatment, and this process allows resolution to be achieved in real time.

We recognise that sometimes patients prefer more formal channels. Therefore, in addition to the opportunities above, we also have a complaints and compliments process. If a patient chooses to do so, they can contact our Clinical Governance and Quality Team via email, phone or in writing with details of the concerns they would like us to investigate. They can also use our feedback form on the “contact us” page on our website.

All patient feedback is shared as learning through internal channels such as team message boards and clinical discussion groups. This enables the team, the lead GP and the CMDU Service Manager to adapt and adopt any best practice.

Providing all these engagements methods allows us to support patients during all stages of their journey on our CMDU service, ensuring that their views are obtained and any areas for actionable improvement are identified, acted upon and reported back to patients where possible.